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The term “lost episode” gets thrown away rather loosely. It usually refers to an episode that, for a variety of reasons, hasn’t shown up in syndication. In the case of the original Hawaii Five-O series, there’s an episode that wasn’t so much lost as buried — shown once on CBS, never rerun, never included in a DVD set.

That would be the second-season episode “Bored She Hung Herself.” One of the plot points involves a character who uses a yoga technique where he hangs himself from a beam without dying. He naturally becomes a suspect when somebody is killed by hanging. In 1996, Rose Freeman, widow of Five-O creator Leonard Freeman, told atendees that within a day or two of the epsiode airing somebody tried to duplicate the trick — and killed himself in the process. Mrs. Freeman said the decision was made there and then that the episode would never ben shown again.

Never is a long time. It’s on YouTube (at least for now). It’s clearly a faded film copy of the original. To be honest, the episode (written by Mel Goldberg and directed by John Newland) is hardly the best episode of the 1968-1980 series. (To read Mike Quigley’s review on his Hawaii Five-O fan Web site, JUST CLICK HERE AND SCROLL DOWN TO EPISODE NO. 39.) But it has taken on a mystique because it has never been shown officially since it was first broadcast. Here’s the start:

And here’s the conclusion where McGarrett (Jack Lord) and Danno (James MacArthur) crack the case:

[…] –Fans watched episodes shown with a film projector. At one point , Zulu was there watching with the fans. One episode shown had his replacement, Al Harrington. Zulu did a mock boo. Another one of the episodes shown was Bored, She Hung Herself, an episode that was shown only once on CBS and hasn’t been seen since, in either syndication or home video. The story behind that is a little complicated. […]